The source transmits a packet of \(b\)  information bits (message size) via \(K\)  hops over the blocklength \({n_D=(m-n_E)/K}\) , with \(\!{n_D > 100}\!\)  [1]}, and the e2e SNR equals to \(\gamma _{e2e}\) , with transmission rate given by \(r = b/n_D\) . Thus, the average BLER at hop \(k\)  can be tightly approximated by [2]}, [3]}
\(\varepsilon _{k}^{\rm Sch} \approx \mathbb {E}\bigg \lbrace  Q\bigg ( \frac{C(\gamma _{k}^{\rm Sch} ) - r}{\sqrt{V(\gamma _{k})/n_D} } \bigg ) \bigg \rbrace  ,\) 
